American Spikenard
"Sarah Vap's poems are stunningly voiced, bristling with drive and energy. Her rich and inhabited landscapes thrive on her tough, relentlessly probing, questioning, and wide-ranging diction. American Spikenard is like one long poem, a poet's coming to terms with identity and history in a quest to be acknowledged for exactly who she is." - Ira Sadoff
"For those ready to explore the glitter and scars of girlhood, Sarah Vap's first book is 'saying, for the sake of integrity, the dearest tings.' Here, in poems in which the ancestors are often made of glass, we find shattered, luminous bedtime stories steeped in vulnerability. At turns sly and direct, American Spikenard summons ghosts and dolls, dogs and ponies, the snotty baby Jesus and holy birthday parties. A beautiful, weird collection that holds the promise of intimacy and the provocation of mystery." - Arielle Greenberg
"The poems of American Spikenard scalpel across landminescapes with insidious precision and a wit that is almost imperceptibly frightening. What the poet decides to look at is pinned back for the reader-- the gift horse in the carp pond, the sage at the car-wreck. I'm held spellbound and often stunned, wanting to look, not wanting to look, drawn in by the ruse of the poet. There's a chance that I could pass through something solid, she says, and I believe her poems are both light and substance, consoling us for everything or nearly everything." - Maureen Seaton
"Sarah Vap conceives an enlivened panorama of family, of farms and flaming orchards, geldings, and 'lily-pads as big as coffee tables.' This sparkling detailing of all that the poet has touched and seen and done is finally more critical than pastoral. The writer is involved in 'the whole conspiring world.' American Spikenard offers a sort of consolation. Her poetry 'a platform/ for knowing what we don't want,' an expression of her 'desire to lift strangers up.'" - C.D. Wright
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"For those ready to explore the glitter and scars of girlhood, Sarah Vap's first book is 'saying, for the sake of integrity, the dearest tings.' Here, in poems in which the ancestors are often made of glass, we find shattered, luminous bedtime stories steeped in vulnerability. At turns sly and direct, American Spikenard summons ghosts and dolls, dogs and ponies, the snotty baby Jesus and holy birthday parties. A beautiful, weird collection that holds the promise of intimacy and the provocation of mystery." - Arielle Greenberg
"The poems of American Spikenard scalpel across landminescapes with insidious precision and a wit that is almost imperceptibly frightening. What the poet decides to look at is pinned back for the reader-- the gift horse in the carp pond, the sage at the car-wreck. I'm held spellbound and often stunned, wanting to look, not wanting to look, drawn in by the ruse of the poet. There's a chance that I could pass through something solid, she says, and I believe her poems are both light and substance, consoling us for everything or nearly everything." - Maureen Seaton
"Sarah Vap conceives an enlivened panorama of family, of farms and flaming orchards, geldings, and 'lily-pads as big as coffee tables.' This sparkling detailing of all that the poet has touched and seen and done is finally more critical than pastoral. The writer is involved in 'the whole conspiring world.' American Spikenard offers a sort of consolation. Her poetry 'a platform/ for knowing what we don't want,' an expression of her 'desire to lift strangers up.'" - C.D. Wright
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